Friedrich Uhde

Friedrich Uhde (born July 12, 1880 in Einbeck , † August 5, 1966 in Dortmund ) was a German engineer and entrepreneur. In 1921 he founded his own plant engineering company in Dortmund-Bövinghausen , today's ThyssenKrupp Industrial Solutions GmbH . At the beginning of the 20th century, he developed, constructed and sold large-scale systems for the production of important chemical raw materials, such as the catalytic synthesis of sulfuric acid and the low-pressure synthesis of ammonia.

education

Philipp Heinrich Georg Friedrich Uhde grew up as the youngest child of August Uhde and his wife Marie, b. Klockemeyer, with three siblings in Einbeck. His father ran a locksmith's shop and made wrought-iron stoves. Friedrich Uhde attended the Einbeck Realprogymnasium until 1895 and graduated with the upper secondary school (the school only became a realgymnasiale full establishment from 1904). After two years of internship at Gebr. Propfe in Hildesheim and the locomotive construction company Egestorff in Hanover, he studied for six semesters at the Technikum in Einbeck (technical college for mechanical engineers and future electrical engineers). He received approval from the Technical University of Hanover and attended three semesters of lectures on mechanical engineering , especially textile machines. During this time he registered his first inventions, such as the patent for a loom.

Engineering work until the end of the First World War

After one year of military service in Berlin, he initially worked for two years as a designer of by-product systems for coking plants or as a department head in the company Dr. C. Otto & Co in Bochum; 1905 to 1914 then as manager of a coking plant at the Lorraine colliery in Gerthe near Bochum. There he designed and built, among other things, around 1906 a test facility for the production of nitric acid by catalytic combustion of ammonia with atmospheric oxygen via platinum contacts ( Ostwald process ). This was the first time that the experimental results obtained by chemist Wilhelm Ostwald around 1900 on a laboratory scale were technically implemented . With this pioneering work in chemical plant engineering , Uhde became internationally known.

During the First World War , Uhde was initially drafted, but was soon brought back to build nitric acid factories at the Lorraine colliery, because the sea ​​blockade imposed on Germany meant that Chile's nitrate could no longer be imported and the nitric acid produced from it for nitrogen fertilizers, safety explosives and gunpowder was in short supply. The first plants of the Chemische Werke Lothringen , built in a short time, were built almost exclusively using acid-resistant stones and stoneware , but this led to ongoing operational disruptions. The other systems were therefore largely built with a new, acid-proof chrome-nickel steel from the Krupp company for pipelines and apparatus. The plants had a daily capacity of 200 tons of sodium nitrate, 500 tons of ammonium nitrate and 200 tons of 95 percent nitric acid.

Entrepreneurship and low pressure ammonia synthesis

After the First World War, Friedrich Uhde founded a company for the manufacture of systems for printing inks in Bövinghausen on April 6, 1921 , but changed the company name to Friedrich Uhde Ingenieurbüro on June 10, 1925 to an independent system business in the field of ammonia synthesis and the production of Build up fertilizers. To this end, he developed a process route for large-scale low-pressure ammonia synthesis, the Mont-Cenis-Uhde process outside of BASF’s Haber-Bosch patents . The first technical test facility for ammonia synthesis at pressures below 60 bar with an aluminum / ferrocyanide catalyst developed by the Swedish engineer Cederberg was built with the help of the Mont-Cenis mine . The first large-scale plants went into operation in 1927/28 and were designed for 100 or 120 tons of ammonia per day. By 1937 a total of 28 ammonia synthesis factories had been sold worldwide. The acquisition of Mont-Cenis by IG Farbenindustrie, the legal successor of BASF, ended legal disputes due to alleged patent infringements. In 1930, Uhde founded high-pressure Apparatebau GmbH (today Uhde High Pressure Technologies GmbH ) to which the experience gained from ammonia synthesis systems was incorporated.

The engineering office moved to a new construction and administration building in Dortmund in 1929. A test laboratory was set up in Bövinghausen with the aim of producing fuel by liquefying coal . The development work devoured a large part of the income from engineering activities, so that cooperations were entered into, among other things. a. 1937 with IG Farbenindustrie , which led to the company Friedrich Uhde KG. In this context, larger hydrogenation and alkylation plants were built in Germany and in Monowice near Auschwitz in occupied Poland for the production of synthetic fuel, which was important for the war effort . From 1944 onwards, mostly bombed refineries were repaired with around 1000 employees. In 1945 the construction and administration building in Dortmund was destroyed by bombs and the engineering sites were occupied by American troops.

Reconstruction after the Second World War

At the end of 1945 Friedrich Uhde KG was placed under British control and Friedrich's son Hans was initially appointed as a personally liable partner. The company was initially engaged in repair work with 99 employees. After the currency reform , Friedrich replaced his son in early 1949. There were seldom larger planning and construction contracts in the post-war period . Therefore, a strong partner was sought and finally found in Knapsack-Griesheim AG , which was created through the unbundling of IG Farbenindustrie. In December 1952, Friedrich Uhde KG was converted into a GmbH. The 72-year-old Friedrich Uhde handed over management to his son Hans and moved to the supervisory board. In "retirement" in 1957 he founded the company Ruhr-Plastik Wegener & Co. in Dortmund, which manufactured extruded polyethylene products.

On April 13, 1909, Friedrich Uhde married Else Aenne Herminghaus from Herdecke, who died in 1915. From this connection came a son. Uhde married Martha Hubbert from Bövinghausen on March 13, 1918; from this connection came two sons and a daughter.

On August 5, 1966, Friedrich Uhde died three years after his wife in Dortmund.

Honors

• 1951 Honorary Senator and 1953 Honorary Doctoral Engineer from the Technical University of Karlsruhe
• 1954 DECHEMA medal from the German Society for Chemical Apparatus
• 1955 Federal Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
• In his hometown of Einbeck, Dr.-Friedrich-Uhde-Straße is named after him

literature

• Eckhard Schlimme: Friedrich Uhde: 125th birthday on July 12, 2005 - On the life story of the founder of the global company of the same name . In: Einbecker yearbook . tape 49 , 2004, pp. 115-146 .
• Society of German Chemists: Angewandte Chemie, Volume 78, Page 346, Verlag Chemie, 1966.
• Georg Krause, Eduard Johannes Ernst Vietinghoff-Scheel (baron von), Walter Roth, Ernst Baum, Hermann Stadlinger (eds.): Chemiker-Zeitung / Chemische Apparatur, Volume 90, A. Hüthig, 1966.